Curran: Time to imagine what Montreal of the future will look like

Peggy Curran, The Gazette05.05.2014

It’s difficult not to think of the recent proliferation of condo construction or the plans to build nine office and luxury apartment towers around Windsor Station, or to wonder what is to become of hundreds of abandoned or soon-to-be sold church and religious buildings.

It is fair to say that decades of political uncertainty, aided and abetted by systemic corruption and general inertia, have stunted Montreal’s growth, mostly for worse, but occasionally for better.

Until the recent flurry of condo projects, building in the city’s central core has long been dormant, with investments and capital chasing young families and their incomes off the island.

Now the menace of sovereignty has been pushed to the back of the broom closet, offering Montreal the sudden promise of job creation and economic expansion. The trick will be to flourish without messing with the city’s advantages — linguistic and cultural vibrancy, affordable housing, heritage buildings, green space and room to breathe.

There’s nothing like going away for a bit to understand what your hometown is all about, with all its strengths, weaknesses, and potential pitfalls.

In a spring when dreary days abound and leaves are just beginning to sprout, stacking grey Montreal up against blooming London is not exactly a fair fight. With a population more than four times that of Montreal, the British metropolis is one of the most energizing cities in the world, a place to gorge on best bitter and clotted cream, soak up history and architectural treasures, binge on art, theatre and ideas.

And yet. Traffic is absurd and smog is now prevalent. Cyclists play a dangerous game of chicken with buses and taxis as they struggle to navigate winding streets too narrow for bike paths. Unless you are a member of the royal family or an oil sheik with a pied-à-terre in tony South Kensington, the cost of life in London is so exorbitant as to greatly limit an ordinary person’s access to even the most basic necessities.

That’s not just miserly me talking. According to the Numbeo database, which collates statistics on cities around the world, accommodation alone — from rent on a one-bedroom apartment to owning a three-bedroom house in the suburbs — cost 67 per cent more in London than it does in Montreal. And while staples such as milk, bread, beer and wine are slightly cheaper in London than in Montreal, everything else from a single subway fare to a pair of jeans or a ticket to the movies will set you back two to three times as much as it would here.

Small wonder people struggling to find affordable housing have been pushed further and further out of central London, as former council flats in neighbourhoods made famous by Jack the Ripper and Call the Midwife are converted into digs middle-class professionals break the bank to afford.

Meanwhile — and here’s where Montreal should take heed — higgledy-piggledy real estate development funded by offshore investment is rapidly transforming the London skyline in ways that alarm even that city’s avant-garde architects and urban planners.

St. Paul’s Cathedral, the architectural masterpiece that survived the London blitz, is already at risk of being dwarfed by soaring showboat skyscrapers with nicknames like the Shard, the Cheese-grater, the Walkie-Talkie and the Gherkin.

This spring, 80 community leaders — among them internationally renowned architects and artists, business leads and museum directors — signed a “skyline statement,” calling on the city and national government to step back, scale down and consult the public before London unwittingly becomes a northern Dubai-on-Thames.

“When the appearance of a great city is about to be transformed, it is a good idea for its citizens to be shown what is going to happen and have a say in it,” cautioned Rowan Moore, the architecture critic for The Observer, who cited plans for more than 230 buildings of 20 to 60 storeys in central and suburban London. “It is sometimes said that London needs skyscrapers to make an ‘iconic’ statement on the world stage, but these developments make it look less distinctive. And if the city tries to engage in the global race for height, it can only lose.”

Montreal is a long way from having the problems that plague a booming world city such as London. Or is it? Closer to home, down the 401, rival Toronto used those years Quebec squandered on independence referendums to build an ugly phalanx of towers that block off the harbour and hug the Gardiner Expressway in a scary way.

In Montreal, it’s difficult not to think of the recent proliferation of condo construction or the plans to build nine office and luxury apartment towers around Windsor Station, or to wonder what is to become of hundreds of abandoned or soon-to-be sold church and religious buildings.

It is the time for the city and its partners — in business, architecture, social housing and community development — to imagine what they want the Montreal of the future to look like and figure out how they will make it happen in a way which is beautiful, sustainable, and affordable.